My aim is to offer insights into some of the more subtle principles underpinning prints. The commentary is based on thirty-eight years of teaching and the prints and other collectables that I am focusing on are those which I have acquired over the years.
In the galleries of prints (accessed by clicking the links immediately below) I am also adding fresh images offered for sale. If you get lost in the maze of links, simply click the "home" button to return to the blog discussions.

Wednesday, 14 December 2016

Paulus Bril’s etching of a landscape in an octagonal frame

“Plate 2”, c.1600,
from a series of eight plates showing landscapes in octagons composed in the
genre of landscape imagery termed “Weltlandschaft” (World Landscape),

Etching on
thick laid paper trimmed with thread margins on the left and right sides and
slightly within the platemark at the upper and lower edge. From the collections
Naudet (Lugt 1937), and Stefan Lanzinger, Munich (Lugt 2358).

Size: (sheet) 12.6
x 9.4 cm

State i (of ii)
before the address of Rossi (Note that the plate number, “II”, has been trimmed from this impression)

Condition: slightly silvery impression, trimmed
with thread margins on the sides and within the platemark at the top and bottom. There is a small stain (ink?) at the upper edge and
light age toning, otherwise the sheet is in excellent condition for its age. This is an
exceptionally rare print.

This print has been sold

When Bril
executed this print a tradition of landscape composition called the “Weltlandschaft”
(German for “World Landscape”) was well established. In an earlier post I
described the key attributes of this tradition as portraying elevated views “constructed
with all that is spectacular in an ideal world: grand mountains, statuesque
trees, vast stretches of water and a sprinkling of monumental buildings with
folk dressed from an Olympian past engaged in symbolic acts.” (see the post onAdriaen van der Cabel’s etching,
“Extensive Landscape with River, Mountains, and Village”, Saturday, 26 November
2016). This genre of landscape celebrated the idea that the world was a divine
creation and the imagery portrayed in artworks was intended to crystallise this
way of thinking by making the concept a visual reality.

Of course,
artists change and Bril’s later works when he came under the influence of Annibale
Carracci and Adam Elsheimer reveal a far less grand view of landscape, in the
sense that these later works have low viewpoints withbucolic scenes viewed at close range.
Interestingly, these later works are the ones that arguably “shaped” the course
of art history. What I mean by this is that Bril is often considered to be the
artistic link between the landscapes of dramatic contrasts of the
Weltlandschaft—evolved from Joachim Patinir—and the classical landscape
tradition of Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain.